


1001 Places to See

by BlauKapellmeister



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 14:21:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2853971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlauKapellmeister/pseuds/BlauKapellmeister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“And once you start running, you start to forget; slowly, after a while, you just stopping asking. Who are you? Where are you from? What set you on your way and where are you going? Oh...and what is your name?” –She Said, He Said </p><p>A glimpse into Clara's life on Earth as a teacher.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1001 Places to See

_“And once you start running, you start to forget; slowly, after a while, you just stopping asking. Who are you? Where are you from? What set you on your way and where are you going? Oh...and what is your name?”_ –She Said, He Said

 ***

The Doctor’s arms were a source of comfort, a familiarity within the void of dying light and fading memories. She blinked in confusion, clinging to his voice. It was a life buoy in the crashing waves. Already she was slipping. His voice cracked and splintered.

“He’s the one who broke the promise.”

Clara felt her vision darken abruptly. Her breathing hitched in panic as her legs slid out from beneath her, torn away in the undertow. Strong arms grabbed at her waist, but it was too late. She was drowning.

It was peaceful beneath the surface. The world roiled and burned above her, but it was quiet here. She could still feel the time winds licking across her skin, tickling her like a curious school of fish. A forgotten memory nudged her gently.

“And you invented fish?”

“Because I dislike swimming alone.”

And suddenly she wasn’t alone. A thousand faces swam forward to greet her. Some were warm and kind. Crying faces at Christmas time and relieved grins at the prospect of survival. Others were not so kind. Tiny, sharp teeth nicked at her skin. She remembered being stabbed, shot, bludgeoned, strangled, and most of all, she remembered burning. It burned and burned and burned until the ocean ran dry and she drifted in frightfully arid darkness.

I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I am. Doctor? Please, Doctor!

A hand brushed the sweat from her forehead, and she concentrated, willing a body into existence. The Doctor was close, so close, just beyond the veil, but try as she might she couldn’t lift her eyelids. They were welded shut.

The TARDIS hummed.

“I know, Old Girl. I know.”

And she fell away again.

Falling was nothing to fear. The impact, however, was another story. She smacked against the ground with enough force to shatter bone. She rested there, bleary eyed, melting into the snow. A welcome numbness coursed through her veins and she wondered idly if she was dying, properly dying, again. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited.

But this wasn’t death. It couldn’t be death. She felt her bones knitting together, fitting into their corresponding parts like macabre puzzle pieces. Air rushed her lungs. Her heart beat in her head like a drum. It took her a moment to realize she wasn’t drumming alone. The Doctor was in the darkness with her, leading her to the surface. She clung to the sound, reaching for it with mended fingers.

Clara, my Clara.

Her eyelids drifted open, blearily just for a moment.

“Doctor?”

A tender kiss tickled her brow.

“Clara Oswald, the one and only. Please stay.”

“I will.”

She smiled as she slipped away once again. In her dreams, the sky burned like Gallifrey.

 ***

Clara Oswald flipped on the light switch, waited for the dust to settle, and stepped into her new classroom. Florescent lights captured every pen mark scrawled across a surface. The chalkboard was dirty, the smudges of lessons past smeared like ghosts in the backdrop of a play. Twenty or so desks were stacked haphazardly in a corner. The unmistakable musk of peeling paint and old books hung about the room like an old woman’s perfume. Clara inhaled deeply. A hundred and one places to see, and this one space was entirely hers. For now, at least.

Since her appointment at Coal Hill School, she had regarded the prospect of her new career with a guarded, almost anxious, sense of pride. 

The thing was, she had seen at least a hundred and one places, tumbling like a leaf through the time winds that traced the Doctor’s scar in the universe. No, she had lived those one hundred and one dreams, unknowingly torn to bits and reassembled, a pastiche of joy and pain and ecstasy. She may have been rubbish at history, but stories were another matter entirely.

And that was the thing really. Though she grinned and lied, smiling and stomaching whole packages of Jammie Dodgers with zeal, she couldn’t shake the fear. Although she had lived a hundred and one lives, none of them were hers. 

Her echoes were like characters in a book, lines on a page, forgotten shortly after the exam.

But if she wore her mask then maybe, just maybe, the Doctor wouldn’t notice. So every Wednesday carried on like the rest, filled with close encounters, harrowing escapes, and the unresolved tension that marked their relationship.  Their Wednesdays would have to begin a little later in the afternoon now, of course, but that didn’t have to change anything. End of a stressful day, narrowly resist hurling a student out of the second floor window, pop off to the TARDIS, and see the stars.

She didn’t acknowledge the lump that welled in her throat. She couldn’t.

Clara un-stacked the desks, arranging them in neat rows, pausing at a tabletop vandalized with a cartoonish wolf, and reminded herself once more:

_My name is Clara Oswald, and I’m an English teacher from planet Earth. This is my story._

_***_

_This is my story. This is my story…._

A mantra.

Yet things never seem to pan out quite how you envision them, particularly when you’re a self-identified control freak placed in charge of a room of defiant, irrational fourteen-year-olds. Clara wasn’t convinced that Uni had offered adequate preparation for service on the frontline. In fact, Clara wasn’t convinced that surviving a full assault of cybermen even really compared, actually. That first week alone, Clara had tried to expel the entire sixth form, sopped ink all over her blouse while wrestling with a (potentially hostile) dalek of a copier, almost cried (twice), and vowed never to step into a classroom again.

But then she did. Clara Oswald didn’t raise a white flag of defeat so easily.

“How’s the teaching?”

“Rubbish,” Clara answered truthfully, careful to keep her voice light and blasé. She smiled, trying to forget the ever-growing stack of papers left to mark on her bedside table, stacked with shoddily crafted student essays on “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.” She couldn’t bring herself to admit that teaching had left her completely and utterly drained. She was certainly teaching, but she wasn’t entirely certain whether or not the students were actually _learning_ anything. Sometimes when she closed her eyes she envisioned the children ripping her apart like Simon in _Lord of the Flies_. Several students stood out to fill the role of Jack Merridew. Somehow she had to last until Christmas without completely losing control. And somehow, deep inside, that challenge thrilled her.

Then, that Wednesday dissolved into a debacle complete with shape-shifting Zygons, three irate Doctors, and the dubious annihilation of the entirety of Gallifrey.

Clara hit the snooze button three times on Thursday morning before dragging herself out of bed to Coal Hill.

And it did get better. Some of her colleagues had drinking nights, designated days of the week when they said, “To Hell with it,” drank a couple of pints, and popped several aspirin before morning assembly. Instead she had _her_ Wednesdays with the Doctor, afternoons the spanned the entirety of the cosmos. Those Wednesdays, her tiny mark on the universe at Coal Hill seemed smaller, but somehow all the more important.

_My name is Clara Oswald, and I’m an English teacher from planet Earth._

_The leaf was page one, but this is my story._

 

 

                       


End file.
